Thursday, May 31, 2012
With My Daughter by Jefferson Hansen
This poem now appears on the Truck Blog, thanks to guest editor Mary Kasimor, who chose it, and blog editor Halvord Johnson.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Review of BUSINESS AS USUAL, a mystery by Michael Boughn
What makes a mystery good isn't 'the usual business': every conventional mystery begins with a nasty crime, then introduces some interesting detective or detectives, a slew of possible culprits, obstacles, a death-defying moment, and a resolution that rights the world for a time or, at the very least, gets one thing right in this stinky lot of a life we live in.
So what separates one mystery from another? Well, unpredictability, of course. But, mostly, good description. Description that individuates characters, that makes even malevolence shine in a strange new way, and that brings scenes and settings alive in all their vividness and vitality.
Michael Boughn can describe.
From his horizon-wide renderings of the Niagara escarpment in Ontario, to the minutiae in the streets of Buffalo, NY, to the clicking and whirring of big-city Toronto, Business As Usual entertains and enlivens.
Claire Dumond is a beautiful botany professor who works with vineyards on the side. Oh, and she has a mean martial arts kick and isn't afraid to use it on flesh. Her sidekick (or is it the other way around?) is David Sanders—poet, novelist, and wannabe professor who can't seem to make it happen.
They stumble upon a toxic waste "spill" that turns out to be intentional, some toxic dumping in a quarry, corrupt Canadian officials, and, of course, mobsters. Could you ask for less?
A brilliant, African American MIT grad and computer genius Benjamin; a French vineyard owner named Phillipe; and, of course, one mobster named "Sal" and another named "Racco."
If you care to take an entertaining and fun ride through the treacheries of academia, the deadliness of the mob, the nastiness of illegitimate trucking, the intricacies of fake international bonds, and the thrill of a wild gunfight that begins after a guy dies because a computer monitor was slammed on his head a la the rock singer Mojo Nixon, this book's for you.
Thank you, Michael Boughn.
___________________________
Business As Usual (NeWest Press)
Monday, May 21, 2012
Cannibalism and Pierre Joris' "Antlers"
[This is a continuation of the previous post.]
What is “cannibalism”? It could refer to two actions: eating your own flesh or eating the flesh of another of one’s own kind.
_____________________
Pierre Joris, Brecchia: Selected Poems 1972-1986 (éditons phi, Station Hill, 1987)
Pierre Joris, Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999 (Wesleyan UP, 2001)
Peter Cockelbergh, Pierre Joris—Cartographies of the In-Between (Litteraria Pragensia, 2011)
What is “cannibalism”? It could refer to two actions: eating your own flesh or eating the flesh of another of one’s own kind.
Stars cannibalize themselves. Then cannibalize their kin,
their solar systems.
Cannibalism among animals is more widespread than often
thought: chimpanzees, polar bears, and even, possibly, dolphins.
The universe itself, according to the current understandings
of physics, cannibalizes its own energy, burning itself away into "darkness."
Cannibalism plays against similarity and difference. For
instance, the individual eats another individual of the same kind. Or the mouth
eats another body part. It would be tough for the mouth to eat itself, although
some desperate or deranged people have chomped on their very lips.
Pierre Joris’ “Antlers” gathers the universe about a word, "antlers," a
word of cannibalism, of defense, of killing, of awe, of a glorious story ultimately to be
ignored because of the gnawing of time, the gnawing of other, more important
concerns.
To live is cave into yourself, to grow hungry for your own
vitality, to grow stooped as a result of your own voraciousness, to chomp
against yourself: a law of nature as inexorable as gravity.
(If you don’t like it, go to another universe.)
The only body part you can't cannibilize is your mouth. But
another will do it for you. Will eat away your most basic childhood enunciations, calling
them anything but okay, twisting your talk into channels where it will die an acceptable death—slowly, rather than quickly.
I recall a dinner where we adults talked of the auto industry cannibalizing the streetcars. And a young child wailing when he found the restaurant had run out of his ice cream. He wailed, full-throated, from the ocean's spongy bottom. I loved him for it. And his parents, necessarily, had to hush him. And I loved them for that, but not as much as I loved the child—in that moment.
Maybe he would become a poet of sorts, singing of change.
I recall a dinner where we adults talked of the auto industry cannibalizing the streetcars. And a young child wailing when he found the restaurant had run out of his ice cream. He wailed, full-throated, from the ocean's spongy bottom. I loved him for it. And his parents, necessarily, had to hush him. And I loved them for that, but not as much as I loved the child—in that moment.
Maybe he would become a poet of sorts, singing of change.
“What does not change is the will to change,” said the poet
Charles Olson, but change can’t be helped—will or no will. Change just happens. Here, Joris veers
from the pronunications of Olson: Joris enacts change—as root deep to
his poetics as ink and papyrus. As inevitable as the cannibalism of the
universe.
To me, the antlers in Joris’ poem become an emblem of
cannibalism, of the glory of the hunt and sustenance, of the losing of that
glory in the grind of living and caring, of one priority chewing and discarding
another, of old glories faintly pulsing, a pulsar, only an echo of what it once
was.
Your very organs eat themselves—fire dropping to embers
dropping to mere ash. Your hairline, your skin, your heart muscle—your child
gnaws at as you worry.
We will grow old, and, in turn, gnaw at our children. Most accept out of duty, some gladly and gratefully remembering what we did for them, others grudgingly.
Love sustains us. And eats us.
_____________________
Pierre Joris, Brecchia: Selected Poems 1972-1986 (éditons phi, Station Hill, 1987)
Pierre Joris, Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999 (Wesleyan UP, 2001)
Peter Cockelbergh, Pierre Joris—Cartographies of the In-Between (Litteraria Pragensia, 2011)
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Pierre Joris Post 2: on "Antlers"
I had to take about a week off from the blog while I successfully secured a full time job. But I'm back, now. I doubt that I will be able to keep it this up as well as I have been, but I hope to post about three times a week.
The recently published Pierre Joris—Cartographies of the In-Between (Litteraria Pragensia Books), begins with a quotation from Joris' early poem "Antlers," and for good reason—it is a memorable poem, perhaps a defining one for that era of Joris' poetry.
What follows is a series of observations, notes, and glancings relative to my personal experience with the poem. Given the particulars of my trajectories through this world, what does "Antlers," especially the sections collected in Joris first selected poems, Brecchia, do for me?
Early in the long poem, Joris mentions buying some reindeer antlers that
" are still
& not mounted,
mildewed
next to the cracked flower
pots"
I grew up on a street of deer hunters, although my family was not one of them. In a special room or the basement they had gun racks and a deer head sporting antlers high on a wall. Though my friends, they were a breed apart from me. They told me of misdirection.
You could hunt by walking a glance through the woods, over trails common to deer, and searching for tracks. Or you could hunt by waiting in a stand attached to a tree. There, you hoped to capitalize on the deer's wanderings: misdirection.
One way of hunting had nothing to do with misdirection. A phalanx of hunters, about 10 feet between each, marched through a wood, flushing. Such work may be efficient killing, but it can coax no truth.
Coaxing arises from dancing. Truth—quick, effervescent, quickly camouflaged—stems from dance.
Even moving straight ahead in a certain fashion—alert, noticing, wondering, coalescing the manifold—can turn into a form of misstep, misdirection, sidestepping into truth. What was that in the corner of my eye?
Any truth is provisional:
(where rhythm
means death
there is no
such thing
as rhythm) (35)
In this moment, toward the end of the poem, Joris comes to realization, statement, insight. And, I think, he means what he says, philosophically, but equally importantly, he keeps moving. No concluding couplet, no Wallace Stevens wrapping up "The Idea of Order at Key West" with just such an idea. Where Stevens states, Joris enacts.
No ideas but in dance
of form
of line
of myth.
How do I approach the Classical and European allusions such as Artemis and St. Hubert? T.S. Eliot once snottily said that to understand "The Wasteland" you already had to have read a foot-wide selection of books. But, in a way, he's right: poetic allusion doesn't work well unless it reverberates in the marrow of the reader's bones. These myths cannot do so for me, because they are not my myths—not George Washington and Betsy Ross and Martin Luther King.
When I come to these allusions, I look them up, but they can penetrate me no more deeply than the upper level of epidermis, which I will soon molt.
I can only touch by misdirection; the myths are pieces of stories I overhear: compelling, involving, absorbing. I strain my ear in their direction, desiring a fuller rendition, and then Joris
moves.
Misdirection.
Tangent.
Torque.
Feint.
The best dancers turn up where you don't expect, ever.
"We kill
deer
& make of their antlers
knifehandles."
Before reading this, I could not have guessed that humans played a crucial role in deer (who are herbivores) cannibalism.
A misdirection.
A dance.
A weirdness at the heart of misadjustment
" The young man's
initiation:
to break
open
the slain deer.
My bone-handle knife." (22)
Joris not only alludes to various mythologies, he creates his own. Above, the young boy is initiated into death, rhythm, butchering, sustenance. Initiated into his place in the cannibalism of deer, into the cannibalism of earth, of the universe.
The stag's pearled antlers impale the hounds tracking the prize. Cannibalism. Hounds dying to get the antlers for the hunter, who will carve up other deer with them. Die to die. Die for killing.
Kill for the venison. But mostly for the antlers:
" I learned all this
early
I was eager
wanting antlers."
The antlers, of course, symbolize the hunt, masculinity (at least traditionally), and dominance over nature. But it is important to remember that Joris only gets to discussing the hunt and the butchering after he has undercut the very aura of antlers: he describes them early in the poem as sitting in a damp room, gathering mildew, rather than being mounted. Then, he mentions how women asked for the mounted deer heads to come down because they scare the kids.
Misdirection: decentralization: parenting concerns determine the home, a home partly fed by the hunt. Trophies must gather dust or mold: they represent a climax, but any climax is dependent upon anti-climax as background. Nurturing kids takes precedence over the symbol not of simple sustenance, but dominance. Over time, such symbols become a little bit empty, display yesterday's tired story, a story as impractical as a dead deer's head when the kids need food and care.
Before the hunt even begins, Joris announces the dissipation of the suspense.
But if we find those antlers in the attic, "spiderwebs span[ning] / the distance / from point / to point," a feint aura of hunting remains, and not only a hunt, but The Hunt: sustenance, glory, initiation, and, finally, prioritization. Put the glory in the corner where it won't scare the kids.
Joris ends the poem by referring to how antlers grow with the years and record change and time and rhythm. But ends with a reference to the wiping out of the Delawares and
" the tail swallows the head
for a change."
This difficult image echoes how change is enacted throughout the poem on all sorts of levels: with philosophy, poetics, narrative, myth, and childhood.
I guess Joris asks us to re-imagine an almost clichéd image, to see the end as the beginning, the tail being the hunter and eater rather than the usual head (face, mouth, brain.) Does the body cannibalize the head? Does the dance take over reason? Does the jittery, zig-zagging quality of Joris' lines and the misdirections and glancings of his observations, stories, allusions, turn into a dance both particular and whole? part of a universe that eats itself, not "at the barn-dance / of chaos," but in the multivalent admixture of all that can and will, turning and torquing, rhythm and death and dance and change? Any climax eats itself.
_____________________
Pierre Joris, Brecchia: Selected Poems 1972-1986 (éditons phi, Station Hill, 1987)
Pierre Joris, Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999 (Wesleyan UP, 2001)
Peter Cockelbergh, Pierre Joris—Cartographies of the In-Between (Litteraria Pragensia, 2011)
The recently published Pierre Joris—Cartographies of the In-Between (Litteraria Pragensia Books), begins with a quotation from Joris' early poem "Antlers," and for good reason—it is a memorable poem, perhaps a defining one for that era of Joris' poetry.
What follows is a series of observations, notes, and glancings relative to my personal experience with the poem. Given the particulars of my trajectories through this world, what does "Antlers," especially the sections collected in Joris first selected poems, Brecchia, do for me?
Early in the long poem, Joris mentions buying some reindeer antlers that
" are still
& not mounted,
mildewed
next to the cracked flower
pots"
I grew up on a street of deer hunters, although my family was not one of them. In a special room or the basement they had gun racks and a deer head sporting antlers high on a wall. Though my friends, they were a breed apart from me. They told me of misdirection.
You could hunt by walking a glance through the woods, over trails common to deer, and searching for tracks. Or you could hunt by waiting in a stand attached to a tree. There, you hoped to capitalize on the deer's wanderings: misdirection.
One way of hunting had nothing to do with misdirection. A phalanx of hunters, about 10 feet between each, marched through a wood, flushing. Such work may be efficient killing, but it can coax no truth.
Coaxing arises from dancing. Truth—quick, effervescent, quickly camouflaged—stems from dance.
Even moving straight ahead in a certain fashion—alert, noticing, wondering, coalescing the manifold—can turn into a form of misstep, misdirection, sidestepping into truth. What was that in the corner of my eye?
Any truth is provisional:
(where rhythm
means death
there is no
such thing
as rhythm) (35)
In this moment, toward the end of the poem, Joris comes to realization, statement, insight. And, I think, he means what he says, philosophically, but equally importantly, he keeps moving. No concluding couplet, no Wallace Stevens wrapping up "The Idea of Order at Key West" with just such an idea. Where Stevens states, Joris enacts.
No ideas but in dance
of form
of line
of myth.
How do I approach the Classical and European allusions such as Artemis and St. Hubert? T.S. Eliot once snottily said that to understand "The Wasteland" you already had to have read a foot-wide selection of books. But, in a way, he's right: poetic allusion doesn't work well unless it reverberates in the marrow of the reader's bones. These myths cannot do so for me, because they are not my myths—not George Washington and Betsy Ross and Martin Luther King.
When I come to these allusions, I look them up, but they can penetrate me no more deeply than the upper level of epidermis, which I will soon molt.
I can only touch by misdirection; the myths are pieces of stories I overhear: compelling, involving, absorbing. I strain my ear in their direction, desiring a fuller rendition, and then Joris
moves.
Misdirection.
Tangent.
Torque.
Feint.
The best dancers turn up where you don't expect, ever.
"We kill
deer
& make of their antlers
knifehandles."
Before reading this, I could not have guessed that humans played a crucial role in deer (who are herbivores) cannibalism.
A misdirection.
A dance.
A weirdness at the heart of misadjustment
" The young man's
initiation:
to break
open
the slain deer.
My bone-handle knife." (22)
Joris not only alludes to various mythologies, he creates his own. Above, the young boy is initiated into death, rhythm, butchering, sustenance. Initiated into his place in the cannibalism of deer, into the cannibalism of earth, of the universe.
The stag's pearled antlers impale the hounds tracking the prize. Cannibalism. Hounds dying to get the antlers for the hunter, who will carve up other deer with them. Die to die. Die for killing.
Kill for the venison. But mostly for the antlers:
" I learned all this
early
I was eager
wanting antlers."
The antlers, of course, symbolize the hunt, masculinity (at least traditionally), and dominance over nature. But it is important to remember that Joris only gets to discussing the hunt and the butchering after he has undercut the very aura of antlers: he describes them early in the poem as sitting in a damp room, gathering mildew, rather than being mounted. Then, he mentions how women asked for the mounted deer heads to come down because they scare the kids.
Misdirection: decentralization: parenting concerns determine the home, a home partly fed by the hunt. Trophies must gather dust or mold: they represent a climax, but any climax is dependent upon anti-climax as background. Nurturing kids takes precedence over the symbol not of simple sustenance, but dominance. Over time, such symbols become a little bit empty, display yesterday's tired story, a story as impractical as a dead deer's head when the kids need food and care.
Before the hunt even begins, Joris announces the dissipation of the suspense.
But if we find those antlers in the attic, "spiderwebs span[ning] / the distance / from point / to point," a feint aura of hunting remains, and not only a hunt, but The Hunt: sustenance, glory, initiation, and, finally, prioritization. Put the glory in the corner where it won't scare the kids.
Joris ends the poem by referring to how antlers grow with the years and record change and time and rhythm. But ends with a reference to the wiping out of the Delawares and
" the tail swallows the head
for a change."
This difficult image echoes how change is enacted throughout the poem on all sorts of levels: with philosophy, poetics, narrative, myth, and childhood.
I guess Joris asks us to re-imagine an almost clichéd image, to see the end as the beginning, the tail being the hunter and eater rather than the usual head (face, mouth, brain.) Does the body cannibalize the head? Does the dance take over reason? Does the jittery, zig-zagging quality of Joris' lines and the misdirections and glancings of his observations, stories, allusions, turn into a dance both particular and whole? part of a universe that eats itself, not "at the barn-dance / of chaos," but in the multivalent admixture of all that can and will, turning and torquing, rhythm and death and dance and change? Any climax eats itself.
_____________________
Pierre Joris, Brecchia: Selected Poems 1972-1986 (éditons phi, Station Hill, 1987)
Pierre Joris, Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999 (Wesleyan UP, 2001)
Peter Cockelbergh, Pierre Joris—Cartographies of the In-Between (Litteraria Pragensia, 2011)
Sunday, April 29, 2012
The Poetry of Pierre Joris 1
Pierre Joris, who grew up in Luxembourg, once told me that he only speaks Luxembourgish with his mother. He may have been exaggerating, but the linguistic nomadism demanded by living in this European crossroads provides much of the experiential mulch for his poetry, going all the way back to the earliest poems in his first selected collection: Brecchia: Selected Poems 1972-1986.
This is the first in a series of occasional posts on Joris' poetry that will stem from my rereading his two selected collections—Brecchia and Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999.
My first observation is a simple one that involves lineation. Poetry, of course, is defined by line breaks, and this is especially true of nonmetered poetry where such breaks are solely a choice on the part of the poet and define the rhythm, emphasis, and sonic lay of a piece.
When I think of Joris' poetry, I generally picture nervous, one- to three-word lines often placed in something of a staccato fashion indented from the left margin. However, this is only one of his many modes in his earliest work. For instance, "A Bundle of Rods Bound Up with an Axe in the Middle, Its Blade Projecting" often has thick, clotted lines of about ten words replete with little punctuation.
The light jitteriness of Joris' better-known early work, "Antlers" or the notebook poems from "Tracing," gives way to a compactness and, for me at least, semantic obfuscation (in the sense of Bernadette Meyers' "The Obfuscated Poem":
like acorns assemble the sows or
not like but still the glyph distilled
in place of which is nowhere & only
in time & first letter is a matter
For me, this poem bangs and crashes with possible meaning—"like...not like but still..."—not settling anywhere. When reading it, I feel overwhelmed with the violent potentials of language and its associations.
In his better known early poems, Joris seems to feel out and test turn and ripple away in a dance across and through language and myth and time and space. Here, we have just the opposite: a sediment of thick language left after the dance has been burned off.
My next post will be on "Antlers." I wanted, however, to begin by calling attention to some of Joris' less-known poetic practices.
_______________________
Brecchia: Selected Poems 1972-1986
Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999
Pierre Joris' Amazon page
Pierre Joris—Cartographies of the In-Between, edited by Peter Cockelbergh, contains essays on all things Joris.
Nomadics, Joris' blog—Currently, you can read an interview with Joris' longtime collaborator Jerome Rothenberg.
This is the first in a series of occasional posts on Joris' poetry that will stem from my rereading his two selected collections—Brecchia and Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999.
My first observation is a simple one that involves lineation. Poetry, of course, is defined by line breaks, and this is especially true of nonmetered poetry where such breaks are solely a choice on the part of the poet and define the rhythm, emphasis, and sonic lay of a piece.
When I think of Joris' poetry, I generally picture nervous, one- to three-word lines often placed in something of a staccato fashion indented from the left margin. However, this is only one of his many modes in his earliest work. For instance, "A Bundle of Rods Bound Up with an Axe in the Middle, Its Blade Projecting" often has thick, clotted lines of about ten words replete with little punctuation.
The light jitteriness of Joris' better-known early work, "Antlers" or the notebook poems from "Tracing," gives way to a compactness and, for me at least, semantic obfuscation (in the sense of Bernadette Meyers' "The Obfuscated Poem":
like acorns assemble the sows or
not like but still the glyph distilled
in place of which is nowhere & only
in time & first letter is a matter
For me, this poem bangs and crashes with possible meaning—"like...not like but still..."—not settling anywhere. When reading it, I feel overwhelmed with the violent potentials of language and its associations.
In his better known early poems, Joris seems to feel out and test turn and ripple away in a dance across and through language and myth and time and space. Here, we have just the opposite: a sediment of thick language left after the dance has been burned off.
My next post will be on "Antlers." I wanted, however, to begin by calling attention to some of Joris' less-known poetic practices.
_______________________
Brecchia: Selected Poems 1972-1986
Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999
Pierre Joris' Amazon page
Pierre Joris—Cartographies of the In-Between, edited by Peter Cockelbergh, contains essays on all things Joris.
Nomadics, Joris' blog—Currently, you can read an interview with Joris' longtime collaborator Jerome Rothenberg.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Charles L. Mee's TRUE LOVE: an Interview With Duane Koivisto
Actor Duane Koivisto discusses his role as "Phil" in Charles L. Mee's play True Love, which is currently being presented by The Chameleon Theatre Circle at the Burnsville Performing Arts Center in Burnsville, MN. Burnsville is a second-ring suburb south of Minneapolis.
The play is directed by Barbe Marshall.
According to a company member, Chameleon likes to bring quality, contemporary theater to audiences south of the Minnesota River.
Chameleon Theatre Website—You can view the trailer for the play here.
See Sophie Kerman's review of the play in Aisle Say Twin Cities.
Charles Mee on the web.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Mississippi Hill Country Blues
for Steve, Jonathan, and Oscar
Mississippi Fred McDowell is often cited as the first Hill Country Blues musician. Unlike the better known Delta Blues (Robert Johnson, early Muddy Waters, Son House), Hill Country Blues is characterized by few chord changes; a driving, sometimes droning rhythm; often reserved singing; and hypnotic, perhaps African-derived or influenced, percussion. Another important source is the fife and drum blues tradition in the area, which is usually characterized by a small band consisting of a fife (homemade flute) player and vocalist leading a group of percussionists.
The style became internationally known after Fat Possum Records began recording artists living around Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1992. While not the only label recording these artists, it is the best known and perhaps best distributed.
Here is my list of favorite Hill Country Blues recordings. To be upfront, my bias is towards singular stylists. Please add to it. (Links are to the allmusic.com articles on the artists.)
Junior Kimbrough & the Soul Blues Boys—All Night Long (Fat Possum)
Junior Kimbrough is often cited as the greatest artist in the genre. This is debatable, but this album is widely considered not only emblematic of the genre, but one of its greatest triumphs.
Mississippi Fred McDowell—The Alan Lomax Recordings (Mississippi Records)
McDowell was a complex, versatile, and cussedly stubborn musician (thank goodness.) This provides a good introduction. I don't know if he can be simply pigeon-holed a Hill Country musician in the manner of the Fat Possum artists, but he is an essential source.
Jessie Mae Hemphill—Get Right Blues (Inside Sounds)
Hemphill was the most important link that I know of between Hill Country blues and the fife and drum tradition. She played drum, tambourine, guitar, and sung with a studied reserve. No other artist is remotely like this singular woman. Steve Leggett calls her "a national treasure."
(I can identify no other female artist from this context. Perhaps this is simply my failure, but I wonder if rural female blues artists are finding it even more difficult to get recorded than are the men. Could there be other unique women artists who are not getting the attention they deserve in part because they are women?)
Charles Caldwell—Remember Me (Fat Possum)
"Why you wait till I get old/Before you decide to put me down?" Could there be a more devastating blues lyric? This 2004 classic proves that Junior Kimbrough, for all his deserved accolades, was not the only musician mining a hypnotic, droning, guitar-driven version of Hill Country blues. The 6'8" Caldwell recorded this album while undergoing chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer. It is his only recording. What did was this intense and ferocious man like when healthy?
CeDell Davis—Feel Like Doin' Something Wrong (Fat Possum)
Stricken with polio when young, Davis' right hand is crippled. As a result, he developed a singular style of playing guitar in which he uses a butter knife as a slide in his right hand and strums with his left. The music is as raw, obsessive, and scary as the title of the album. Davis high, whining voice pierces. His unusual playing style causes the music to be as intentionally atonal as free jazz.
R.L. Burnside—Too Bad Jim (Fat Possum)
Perhaps the best known of the Hill Country musicians, R.L. Burnside was also in many ways the most conventional from a traditional blues perspective. This is not a put-down; it simply points out the uniqueness of the above stylists.
Please add to the list.
Mississippi Fred McDowell is often cited as the first Hill Country Blues musician. Unlike the better known Delta Blues (Robert Johnson, early Muddy Waters, Son House), Hill Country Blues is characterized by few chord changes; a driving, sometimes droning rhythm; often reserved singing; and hypnotic, perhaps African-derived or influenced, percussion. Another important source is the fife and drum blues tradition in the area, which is usually characterized by a small band consisting of a fife (homemade flute) player and vocalist leading a group of percussionists.
The style became internationally known after Fat Possum Records began recording artists living around Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1992. While not the only label recording these artists, it is the best known and perhaps best distributed.
Here is my list of favorite Hill Country Blues recordings. To be upfront, my bias is towards singular stylists. Please add to it. (Links are to the allmusic.com articles on the artists.)
Junior Kimbrough & the Soul Blues Boys—All Night Long (Fat Possum)
Junior Kimbrough is often cited as the greatest artist in the genre. This is debatable, but this album is widely considered not only emblematic of the genre, but one of its greatest triumphs.
Mississippi Fred McDowell—The Alan Lomax Recordings (Mississippi Records)
McDowell was a complex, versatile, and cussedly stubborn musician (thank goodness.) This provides a good introduction. I don't know if he can be simply pigeon-holed a Hill Country musician in the manner of the Fat Possum artists, but he is an essential source.
Jessie Mae Hemphill—Get Right Blues (Inside Sounds)
Hemphill was the most important link that I know of between Hill Country blues and the fife and drum tradition. She played drum, tambourine, guitar, and sung with a studied reserve. No other artist is remotely like this singular woman. Steve Leggett calls her "a national treasure."
(I can identify no other female artist from this context. Perhaps this is simply my failure, but I wonder if rural female blues artists are finding it even more difficult to get recorded than are the men. Could there be other unique women artists who are not getting the attention they deserve in part because they are women?)
Charles Caldwell—Remember Me (Fat Possum)
"Why you wait till I get old/Before you decide to put me down?" Could there be a more devastating blues lyric? This 2004 classic proves that Junior Kimbrough, for all his deserved accolades, was not the only musician mining a hypnotic, droning, guitar-driven version of Hill Country blues. The 6'8" Caldwell recorded this album while undergoing chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer. It is his only recording. What did was this intense and ferocious man like when healthy?
CeDell Davis—Feel Like Doin' Something Wrong (Fat Possum)
Stricken with polio when young, Davis' right hand is crippled. As a result, he developed a singular style of playing guitar in which he uses a butter knife as a slide in his right hand and strums with his left. The music is as raw, obsessive, and scary as the title of the album. Davis high, whining voice pierces. His unusual playing style causes the music to be as intentionally atonal as free jazz.
R.L. Burnside—Too Bad Jim (Fat Possum)
Perhaps the best known of the Hill Country musicians, R.L. Burnside was also in many ways the most conventional from a traditional blues perspective. This is not a put-down; it simply points out the uniqueness of the above stylists.
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